


On the way to the harbour – 657 miles

by Hecate



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:04:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shipwrecks and harbours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the way to the harbour – 657 miles

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Characters aren’t mine, no money is made with this.

_"you've got a journey to make,  
there's your horizon to chase"  
"Harbor"/Vienna Teng_

**657**  
After Lisa – and his life will always be after now – he breathes on command, living with eyes half closed and seeing the world in an ugly darkness. He survives, as usual, but that doesn’t mean he is alive.

He still doesn’t know why he’s back, how he’s back, and he remembers the phone call between him and Jack after Lisa’s death as a mess of words without meaning.

"I assume I’m fired."

"You assume wrong."

He hadn’t asked why and had simply returned to work, and now he’s putting his façade back into place with every cup of coffee and everything he throws away.

The others treat carefully around him, their suspicion filling the spaces of the Hub, and he understands it better than he lets on. He is a traitor for them and they all know he isn’t sorry. And all he knows is that he would do it again, no questions asked. Because it had been Lisa and Lisa had been everything. Still is everything, and he can’t seem to let her go.

 

**656**  
"Why do you stay?" Jack asks him one evening when the team is already gone and he’s cleaning up after them, turning the day into a black bag filled with garbage.

"Because I want to remember Lisa."

Jack nods at that, not denying that he would retcon Ianto, and Ianto is strangely grateful for that.

"I hope one day you want to remember us."

 

**649**  
Tosh is the first one to forgive him, and for the longest time she is the only one he doesn’t want to kill. He doesn’t know why, it can’t be her questions or the miserable coffee she brings him, and when he finally finds a reason it is one he didn’t have before. But it’s alright, he is tired of hating all of them. He can make exceptions.

 

**657**  
Lisa had been a good cook and Ianto is a miserable one, and still she had always asked him to help her. He had turned the kitchen into a disaster area and she had laughed, throwing pieces of food at him, turning everything into a bigger mess.

_The war of meat and vegetable_ , they had called it - a stupid name, because they rarely threw either, but Lisa had started it and he hadn’t stopped laughing for minutes. And so they kept it.

His kitchen is clean now and he hardly ever really cooks, and sometimes when he burns something, he can hear Lisa laughing behind him.

 

**650**  
Jack keeps on reaching out for him, lingering touches and looks, and it feels like a threat sometimes. Other times, it feels like a promise, like ‘everything will be ok’ and he doesn’t understand why Jack can make him feel that way.

 

**649**  
When the team comes back after the fairies they don’t talk to Jack; for a while that feels good. But then the silence grows too loud, and when Ianto hands Jack a coffee spiked with alcohol Jack almost smiles at him. Ianto almost smiles back but he bites on his lips, hard, and he turns around and walks out of Jack’s office without looking back.

 

**657**  
In some of his dreams Lisa is normal again, all skin and smile, and the team kills her anyway. They turn her body into a puzzle of bullet holes and she falls and Jack smiles, gun still ready in his hands, and Ianto wakes with a start. Still, he wakes too slow to escape the horrors of his dream and every time Jack looks at him during the day he goes rigid.

 

**656**  
"You alright, Ianto?"

"Of course, sir."

A snort and a warm hand on his shoulder again, and he knows that Jack doesn’t believe him.

 

**639**  
Now that Lisa is gone, there’s more space for grief and Ianto remembers other people he has lost to Torchwood One. He remembers faces, names, laughter and moments in time. He sees Chris again, all blue-eyed and blonde, her face and arms covered in scars. He sees her looking down at him as he bleeds into the ground. He remembers her voice, he hears her telling him to keep breathing, to keep breathing through the pain as she holds the hole in his chest together with her hands. He hears her again now and so he keeps on going, and he keeps on breathing because his leader once told him so.

 

**635**  
He hates himself for the panic that takes hold of him in the cellar, hates himself until Tosh make him laugh and crack a joke, and all he can do to thank her is risking his life for her.

It’s okay, though. Most of the time his life doesn’t feel as if it would be worth much now, but it’s enough to give Tosh a fighting chance.

 

**635**  
Jack gets the gag out of his mouth and unties him, and for a moment - with Jack’s hands on his shoulders and Jack’s voice in his ears - Ianto feels safe. Then reality crashes back into him and his body hurts all over and Lisa is dead and it might be Jack’s fault. _Is_ Jack’s fault. 

Ianto tells himself that this will make sense again later, the blame and hatred safely put back on Jack’s shoulders. Later. When he can breathe again.

 

**637**  
"Where’s her body?" He wishes his voice wouldn’t break like this. Jack looks at him, long and hard, and for a moment he wants to turn around and leave. But he doesn’t. He needs to know.

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes."

"In the morgue. She was a Torchwood member after all."

So close and so dead and he can’t go near the morgue for days.

 

**638**  
The bruises around his ribs where he’d been kicked are the last ones to fade away. The memory of the team sitting near the tents, talking about kisses, lasts longer.

He misses Lisa’s lips.

 

**637**  
"I just can’t stop thinking about it. Tenderising. I just can’t get the word out of my head." He nods at Tosh, busying himself with making coffee while she leans against the wall behind him. "Yeah, me neither."

 

**636**  
"Did you train?" Gwen asks Owen, and Ianto hears it from where he’s standing, watching the team.

_I personally doubt it_ , says Ben in his head, and Ianto nearly spits out his coffee.

_Hush_ , he tells the ghost in his mind, and Ben smiles and bows before he fades away. For a moment Ianto wants to call him back. 

Then he remembers that Ben is dead.

 

**634**  
Tosh is shaking in his arms after Mary and he’s shaking, too, because Tosh almost died and he forgave her and he likes her and he’s had enough of losing people.

 

**629**  
He goes out drinking with Owen after the Mary debacle. They spend the evening silent, drinking one beer after the other. When they leave, Ianto stops Owen with a hand on his shoulder, watching other people pass them by as he speaks. "Don’t be too hard on her."

Owen shrugs his hand off, but he treats Tosh with silence the next day instead of scathing remarks and that’s at least something.

 

**621**  
"You think that she’ll be okay?" he asks Jack, watching Tosh work, and Jack looks at him with one of his many unreadable expressions. 

"Do you care?" 

"Yes."

"She will be. She’s stronger than we’re giving her credit for."

Ianto nods at that and puts down Jack’s coffee and turns to leave.

"You like her, don’t you?"

Ianto nods again. This time, when he starts to walk away, Jack doesn’t stop him.

 

**598**  
Tosh and Ianto in a bar 5 days after Mary, the same bar he was at with Owen, and at the end both of them are too drunk to walk. They end up in a park, staring at the stars for hours before two policemen chase them away. 

Tosh stays at his place for the rest of the night, laying on the side of the bed that was meant for Lisa, and the pain of seeing someone else in her place keeps him awake until it’s time to get up again. Sober and lonely and he doesn’t even try to smile for Tosh.

She takes his hand, her skin warm against his, and for a moment they are statues in his kitchen, the coffee cooling on the table and birds singing outside.

 

**601**  
He dreams of Lisa again and he wakes up reaching out for nothing.

 

**598**  
"Is it wrong to miss her?" Tosh asks him as he sets a cup of coffee down beside her. 

"Who?"

"Mary." 

He’s quiet for a moment and thinks of a knife against Tosh’s throat and interrogating her about Mary later. 

"No." She smiles then, a small smile that he can answer with his own.

He doesn’t tell her that for him things start to go wrong when you stop missing someone.

 

**581**  
It’s Stephen’s birthday and he dreams of his team, laughing at nothing and chasing pink Weevils through an abandoned Torchwood 1 building. He wakes up with a headache, and he misses them so much that he wonders if it would be so bad if he would just end this now.

Pull the trigger, jump, cut, swallow the pill.

But Chris talks to him in his head and so he keeps on breathing. 

_It will get better_ , she promises.

_Liar_ , he answers and she only laughs.

_What, I’m dead and you stop trusting me?_

He shakes his head and hears her laughing again.

_See, it will get better. Just keep on breathing._

 

**562**  
He tries to teach Tosh to make better coffee and the first lesson ends in a laughing fit and coffee all over the place. It doesn’t improve her skills but it improves his mood.

 

**566**  
Seeing Suzie again is wonderful and painful. There is a moment when he wants to pull her close and tell her that she hasn’t been forgotten. But she has been forgotten sometimes, and he doesn’t reach out for her and keeps his distance, hiding like Tosh. And he smiles while he waits for everything to come crashing down again.

And as usual it does.

 

**550**  
The room is too quiet and Suzie is dead again, laying between them, and Ianto can’t take this. Can’t take her white skin and the knowledge how cold her body must be, can’t take Jack’s pain, packaged away behind a stony face. He misses Lisa and misses Suzie, and he misses Jack and he never noticed the latter until now, with Jack so close and so far away. And so he reaches out, does what he never did before and offers himself. It doesn’t sound too bad in his head, and when Jack smiles at him, giddy and alive, he knows that it will be alright for now.

 

**542**  
They are quiet at first, past and pain between them. Ianto doesn’t know if he should run away or close the distance between them. Jack smiles at him then, not as giddy and open as before, but it’s a smile and Ianto can only return it.

"Sorry for the worst pick-up line ever."

Jack laughs and suddenly the distance is easy to cross. And when Jack kisses him, it feels as if it was the first time.

 

**538**  
Jack’s touch is not as hard and rough as he imagined it to be, but it’s so different from Lisa anyway. Long kisses, strong hands, careful passion. And that shouldn’t make as much sense as it does, but that is fine with Ianto. 

It isn’t about love, it is about not remembering Lisa’s face for a night. It is about not dreaming, not feeling her absence beside him, and Jack fills out places that have been empty for far too long.

 

**531**  
Their first morning after: Ianto wakes to Jack’s hand over his hip and a warm body pressed against his back. He stays still for minutes and eternities because it had been a while, and when he forces himself to move, it’s just to put some distance between himself and Jack and not to leave. 

"You know, when Lisa was still alive I thought about doing this. To distract you from what was going on. Never could do it."

Jack is silent for a while but Ianto knows that he’s awake anyway. When he finally speaks, there’s something in his voice Ianto can’t define, can’t understand. "And I thank you for that." Then there are kisses against his neck and hands running over his chest and he arches back against Jack’s body.

 

**492**  
His favourite band is in town; back in London, before everything, he would have gone with Stephen, both of them a sweaty and tired mess after the concert.

But it’s after everything and Stephen is gone, and so Ianto goes alone. It’s strange and before the music starts it’s so very wrong. But then it’s just the music and him and his heart is beating in rhythm to the drums.

 

**487**  
Tosh and him go to a bar again some days after Suzie’s second death, talking themselves through the memories and 

the pain, and he almost tells her about Jack. He almost kisses her when she’s too close, not because he loves her but because she’s warm and he’s drunk and Tosh has always been beautiful.

Instead Tosh calls Jack and Owen, and then the two are with them, drinking and laughing and it feels like months before. Before Lisa died, before Gwen came, and Ianto thinks that Suzie will come and join them any minute now. But she doesn’t because she’s dead, like Lisa is, and he misses them. But it’s not as bad as it used to be because Jack laughs on one side of him and Tosh warms the other with Owen mocking them all across the table.

 

**487**  
When Jack tells him about Eugene saving Gwen’s life, about him suddenly being there, Ianto hates Gwen for a moment. She didn’t even know Eugene and Ianto loved Lisa and Gwen got this. She got a goodbye and all he got were upgrades, bullets and two bodies on the ground.

The moment fades as fast as it came and all it leaves behind is a bitterness in the back of his throat. When Jacks asks him if he’s alright, Ianto nods and when Jack’s hand stays on his knee, warmth spreading, he can even smile.

He’s alright. It’s just that the woman he loved is dead. Loves.

He just doesn’t know anymore.

 

**495**  
Two years ago Lisa attacked a monster with an axe and a scream, and after she was done with it, Chris threw an arm around Ianto and told him to marry Lisa.

"Don’t worry, I will," he had told her. 

Tom had laughed and Lisa had cocked an eyebrow at him. "Is that a proposal?"

"No, not yet. Do you have any preferences for one?" 

"A fancy restaurant on a mountain. With singers and dancers. And an ocean. Palms. Snow."

"I’m sure I can arrange that."

Laughter from his team and Chris’ hand on his shoulder, and sometimes he wonders how he would have asked her.

 

**482**  
"Ianto?"

"Yes?"

"I’m too drunk to walk."

"I can see that."

"Are you sober enough to carry me?"

"Of course, Tosh."

 

**485**  
Tosh sleeps at his place again after the two of them got drunk, and she finds the picture of his Torchwood One team in the morning. Laughing faces that were hidden inside "Hamlet" all the time, and the picture sailed to the ground when she looked at the book.

He picks it up and he almost lets it fall again when he sees their faces, and it’s rats in his stomach all over again. Tosh takes it away then, and later he tells her their names. He tells her about the time when Chris took on a group of Weevils alone, about Ben putting Ianto’s insides back together after Ianto crashed the car against a freaking spaceship to save his team, about Tom and his guns and training with him and a sand sack for hours, about Laura and Stephen discussing Pi, black holes, the answer to everything and 42.

It’s hard to keep breathing but he keeps on talking anyway because he hasn’t told their stories anyone yet. And they should be heard.

 

**479**  
"Death by Weevil or death by human?"

"I’m not answering that, Tosh."

 

**478**  
He borrows DVDs now, watching movies he missed because he took care of Lisa. It’s a way to spend his time, to be somewhere else than the Hub, and sometimes Lisa’s ghost sits beside him. Sometimes it’s just her absence, empty space he can’t touch, can’t kiss.

Sometimes it’s just the movie and he remembers it in the morning, and things are getting closer to normal and he gets used to being alone.

He thinks that this might just be something different than being lonely.

 

**479**  
In the beginning, he tried to tell himself that he let Jack touch him so he could kill him. Because Jack always fucks him with eyes closed, and there is a bomb ticking away in Ianto’s head.

Later, Ianto promises himself that he will stop this thing with Jack because Jack makes him smile now and the ticking got quiet and slow. But he never said goodbye to Lisa and she never let him go, and things shouldn’t get easier just because he can’t take the pain anymore.

 

**476**  
He never gets around to quitting Jack, and when he falls asleep in Jack’s arms he doesn’t dream.

 

**475**  
"Do you think you could do that? Living in another time?"

"I don’t know, Tosh."

"It must be lonely."

"Yes. But at least they have each other."

 

**465**  
Emma makes him laugh, and John makes him worry, and Diane doesn’t really mean anything. He tries to teach them to live in their time and he tries very hard not to start laughing about that.

He himself is still relearning to live, after all.

 

**460**  
He hands Jack his coat without hesitation, knowing what Jack needs before he asks. There are two ghosts on his left, himself and Chris, the same movement, the same knowledge, and he wonders when Jack became his leader.

He wonders when Jack became his anything.

 

**463**  
John died in Ianto’s car and Jack isn’t alright, and Ianto doesn’t really know how to deal with that. He chats with Jack briefly, testing the waters and finding them too deep to jump in. When he checks out his car and thinks of what Jack told him things just don’t add up.

There’s something strange, something that doesn’t make any sense, but Ianto can’t really put his finger on it.

Maybe later, he thinks, and tries to let go because a man died in his car and he really doesn’t know if he wants to keep it. 

 

**464**  
Jack gets himself drunk some days after John and the others, and Ianto watches him from a distance, waiting it out. Later, when Jack buries his face in his hands, Ianto knows what’s going on and still he doesn’t come closer. He doubts Jack wants him there, he knows that he can’t help him.

When he said he would watch Jack suffer he never meant it this way.

 

**465**  
The Torchwood computers going crazy bring him and Tosh to the Hub in the middle of the night, both of them grumbling and drinking coffee blacker than the night outside.

Laura and Stephen look over Tosh’s shoulder, and Ianto smiles at them and almost asks them if they want coffee, too. But he remembers in time and swallows the question.

Ghosts don’t drink coffee.

 

**466**  
He has been in Lisa’s room for hours when Jack finds him, and when Jack slides down the wall to sit beside him, Ianto doesn’t find the will to react. Jack is quiet and Ianto doesn’t want to speak and so they watch water dripping from the ceiling for a silent eternity.

"Today is her birthday," Ianto finally says and he doesn’t understand why he tells Jack that. But it doesn’t really matter because Jack stays silent beside him and Lisa is gone for months now.

He has bought her a present anyway.

 

**453**  
Sometimes he thinks he hates Jack. Because there’s a feeling in his stomach, like a stabbing wound, hot, hard and deep and that has to be hate.

It can’t be anything else.

Sometimes he knows it is.

 

**448**  
He goes out dancing with Tosh because she asks him to, and when he twirls her across the dance floor Lisa is suddenly in his arms, smiling and laughing. He forces the image away because he’s dancing with Tosh and Tosh shouldn’t be the replacement for anyone.

 

**460**  
Later, he thinks that they probably thought he would be busy upstairs, that he wouldn’t come down. But he did and so he sees Owen leaning over Lisa’s body, scalpel in his hands, and the files he carries fall to the ground with a thud. Then he’s out of the room, trying too hard to breathe, and Tosh is suddenly beside him, clinging to him as if she was the one needing comfort.

There are voices all around him, white noise, and it’s Jack’s voice that finally breaks through. "Owen, Gwen, go back and finish that." Moments later, and he doesn’t know what happened in between, he’s on the ground with Tosh on one side and Jack on the other, a bottle of whiskey between them. 

 

**459**  
"I’m sorry you had to see this." Jack sounds tired beside him, holding on to the empty bottle and staring at the wall.

Ianto shifts slightly, rearranging Tosh’s head in his lap, and tries to think about an answer.

"I’m sorry, too."

_About everything_ , he doesn’t add.

 

**481**  
He dreams of Lisa in silver, skin still soft and warm but gleaming like a blade. He dreams of kissing her then and her fingers turning into knives, ripping him apart.

 

**441**  
Tosh tells him about Owen and Diane, and he pretends that he didn’t knew the same way he pretends he doesn’t know about Gwen and Owen. He doesn’t have to about Owen and Tosh anymore because Tosh told him, and why do women fall for Owen anyway?

He’s hard and mean and lacks Jack’s charm and smile, and Ianto just doesn’t get it. He worries, instead, and holds Tosh close because she’s not over Owen yet and she’s not over Mary, and he at least gets that. He isn’t over Lisa, either, not yet, only sometimes when Jack kisses him and he closes his eyes.Ianto isn’t sure if he should be over her. He’s not sure about much these days.

 

**378**  
"A normal computer, a Mac or some alien tech?"

"Are you really asking me that?"

 

**389**  
When things between him and Jack explode again, they do with short, hard words and it feels so very wrong, but Ianto can’t stop himself.

"I'd rather not be with a man who would shoot me."

"You were a danger."

A snort, a deep breathe, and Jack’s answer feels like disappointment to him.

"Ever thought of simply knocking me out, Jack?"

Then he’s out of Jack’s office, storming through the Hub, and he doesn’t care about Tosh shouting after him. He doesn’t care about anything.

He wonders why it still hurts. 

 

**372**  
Ianto, the sand sack and the memory of Tom, and time goes by as he keeps on punching and kicking, the thudding of his fists like a clockwork. Tom says little, just like he did when he was still alive. It’s good to have him there, even though Tom’s hands are insubstantial and there’s no point in him holding the sack steady.

When real hands replace Tom’s, Ianto doesn’t even look up; he knows Jack’s hands and he would only lose his rhythm if he looked at the man.

"Looks like you’re taken care off," Tom says and steps away into nothingness.

 

**370**  
Jack kisses him carefully as if he expects a punch or a curse and it’s only after Ianto wrapped a hand around Jack’s neck that the kiss gets easy and real. Still, the sex is awkward this time, their fight still between them, and neither can let go of it.

Ianto dreams of Lisa that night, with Jack curled around him, and when he wakes up he thinks it’s her until he realizes that this body is too strong, too hard.

But it’s not unfamiliar anymore and Ianto leaves quietly, asking himself what he is doing there.He wants to kill Jack, right? Even his inner voice drips with sarcasm, and he wishes it was easier to lie to himself.

 

**365**  
"She was worth fighting for," Ianto says the next night, and Jack goes very still behind him, the hand that covers Ianto’s hip suddenly hard.

Then, after seconds that stretch like centuries, Jack pulls him closer. Ianto falls asleep like this, covered in warmth, and when he hears Jack speaking he’s sure that it’s just a dream.

"So are you, Ianto Jones."

 

**340**  
The interrogation with the Weevil victim is easy, almost too easy. Jack and him are in sync and it scares him and he loves it, and he remembers doing this with Chris and Tom. The same ease, the same understanding, and Jack is his leader now.

Chris hovers beside his captain, made of memories and air, and smiles at him, bright, happy, and Ianto guesses she’s ok with Jack.

 

**330**  
Jack drives, Tosh works behind them and Ianto like this, likes being part of a team again. A working team and he almost wishes that Gwen and Owen wouldn’t belong to this, that it would be just the three of them. But it’s not and he knows he’ll get used to them, too. 

When he sees Owen going down and hears Gwen’s desperation, all he feels is rage and it takes every bit of his will power not to shoot the people around him, not to kill those who endangered his team.

He doesn’t and later he hugs Tosh briefly and mixes alcohol into all their coffees and holds on to Jack when Jack fucks him.

 

**315**  
He dreams of kissing Jack sometimes now. Kissing him like it would matter, and his sleep is calmer on those nights.

 

**301**  
"Why would anybody want to fight a Weevil?" Tosh frowns at him and he shrugs at her question. 

"We do it, too." 

"But not for fun." 

He raises an eyebrow at her and she shrugs. 

"At least I don’t."

 

**300**  
He doesn’t want to leave Owen alone with the Weevil, not after what had happened, but he does so anyway. They’re Owen’s demons now, not his, and even though he isn’t sure he even likes Owen most of the time, he won’t stand in his way when it comes to this.

There are things you have to deal with alone. Later, he calls Lisa’s parents and tells them that they finally identified the remains of her body. They think she died when her office building collapsed in a blast and it’s almost true, and he’s finally strong enough to lie to them.

He’ll fake the death certificate later and Lisa’s parents will finally find some peace, now that it’s real and solid and a body they can put in the ground, even if it’s not really hers. They don’t know that, and it’s all he can give them now. He hopes it’s enough.

 

**280**  
He never spent much time with the Weevils before. He fed them, checked on them, but he never watched them. Now he does, minutes adding up to hours, and sometimes Jack joins him.

He wonders if the Weevils feel lonely, feel lost in this world that isn’t their own. He never asks Jack what he thinks about that. But when Jack takes his hand sometimes, he doesn’t pull away, and when Jack leaves he follows.

 

**240**  
"You know, one day you have to tell me the secret of your coffee."

"I just know which buttons to push, sir."

 

**259**  
He doesn’t know what he means to Jack. That disturbs him more than it should. 

**260**  
Laura’s birthday comes around on a Sunday; he starts it with a bottle of whiskey and ends it with a bottle of vodka, puking his guts out during the night.

He feels sick and weak on Monday, but he goes to work anyway, drinking coffee and avoiding the ghosts he sees. 

Sometimes he just can’t handle them.

Sometimes a day months after Canary Wharf is exactly like the first day after and Jack and the others don’t mean a thing.

 

**245**  
The next day, Jack suddenly pulls him close when Ianto brings him coffee, a hard embrace made of muscles and whispered words, and when Jack lets go of him Ianto feels different. Better, almost.

"Sir?"

"Something was wrong with you yesterday. But you didn’t look like you wanted to talk about it."

He can only nod, watching Laura grinning at him from behind Jack’s shoulders, and when he finally manages a smile, he smiles at both of them.

 

**230**  
Saturday night outing with Tosh, almost something regular by now. They don’t drown their sorrows as often as before, and they laugh together; it’s normal and good and it has stopped feeling like betraying his Torchwood One team. 

She bitches about Owen; he nods along and makes agreeing noises until she slaps him lightly and starts to laugh. He grins at her because really, who cares about Owen anyway?

 

**201**  
Lisa’s parents called him about her funeral days earlier and he promises that he would be there, and he manages to fit it between the last catastrophe and the next.

The funeral is hard and bitter, and he can’t look her parents in the eye. When Lisa’s mother hugs him he almost breaks down in her arms. He misses Lisa so much and with her family’s grief surrounding him it’s even harder to keep standing. When he leaves, he wants to stop breathing, wants to stop being, because that would be easier and Chris’ ghost isn’t there to tell him to keep on going.

Then he sees Jack and Tosh waiting for him; Tosh’s hug warms him and Jack’s smile pushes away the memories, and things are getting bearable again.

 

**170**  
Sometimes Ianto feels that Lisa dying hasn’t stopped the world from spinning. It has only stopped him and he is moving again now. Step by step, and he thinks the sun might be rising.

Of course, that could also be only a fire at the horizon.

 

**167**  
"You loved her, didn’t you?"

He wishes he didn’t understand Owen that well. But he does because he loved Lisa and he lost her and he’s falling for Jack and he will lose him, too. Jack is not someone you can keep, even if you hold on as hard as you can. He sees that already, feels it. Lisa was the same. But Lisa, at least, loved him in return.

 

**166**  
Jack and Tosh are gone and he’s stuck with Owen and Owen is going crazy. Things could be better. He has the slight suspicion that things are about to get worse.

When he realizes who Bilis is, everything he learned from Torchwood One kicks in again, every time he followed his team’s movements on the CCTV, every time he ordered them out of a situation. He had never been their leader but he had always been the one pointing them into the right direction. He had never done that with Jack and the others because he didn’t know how, but Jack isn’t here and Owen is losing it and he has to do something.

And he won’t lose Gwen. Things are falling apart and the two people he cares about most aren’t there, and he won’t lose another team member. He can’t.

But when she’s out of danger and Owen keeps on trying to open the Rift without Tosh’s equations, he can’t stop him. It’s Jack and Tosh and he wants them back, and he should do something more than talking because Owen puts the whole world in danger

 

**165**  
Owen speaks about Lisa as if she were a thing, and he wants to kill him right then and there. Because she wasn’t.

She was.

And he still can’t stop Owen because Owen talks about Diane and Ianto gets it. He would have done the same for Lisa and it’s still wrong, and he just doesn’t know what to do. And then he remembers Jack, knows that Jack would stop them, and so he does what Jack would do - because that, at least, still makes sense.

Jack needs him to think clearly now.

 

**159**  
Decades ago Tosh wrote one message with blood for them and one for her family, and it’s so very hard not to scream.

 

**160**  
Owen finds what he needs to open the Rift, and Ianto knows he’s losing the last bit of control over the situation and all he can think of is Torchwood One and the battle and he has to stop this, can’t let something like Canary Wharf happen again.

"He’s our leader," Ianto says, and those words scare him because Jack is and Chris is dead. Ianto wants Jack back but he has to trust in Jack’s warnings of the rift.

So he attacks a member of his team; he pulls a gun on a member of his team, and it shouldn’t hurt like this because he doesn’t even like Owen. But it does hurt.

"You have to let Diane go. Like I did with Lisa." And it’s almost the truth, only almost, but enough to keep the gun in his hand and do what Jack would want him to do. And so he tries to keep calm, tries not to rise to Owen’s bait because Owen has no idea of what Ianto does. Jack needs him and that is all that counts, and nothing out of Owen’s mouth changes that, even when it might be true.

Pulling the trigger feels good and bad, and he remembers the last time he shot something different than a bulls eye, and it’s Canary Wharf all over again.

But it’s not enough and he failed. Again.

 

**155**  
Jack and Tosh are back, the world is still there, and Owen is a git like usual instead of a dangerous madman. Still, Ianto can’t hide his annoyance and that is something he’s just not used to.

Something is wrong with Jack. He feels it, but Tosh is with Jack and so Ianto stays behind, Owen grumbling to himself not far away.

 

**156**  
Tosh tells him about Jack and the other Jack later, the kiss they shared, how close they looked. She tells him about stolen names and immortality but somehow only the kiss seems to matter. She’s vague about everything and she watches him from her working station as she types her messages, frowning, and he knows that she worries. Knows that she found out about him and Jack and that this is why she tells him.

He doesn’t say much then, just thinks of Jack and another man, and he almost pukes, and he kind of hates Jack.

Thing is, he kind of loves him, too.

 

**156**  
"So, you got a boyfriend in 1941 now."

"He’s dead."

"A dead boyfriend in 1941 then."

"Ianto, get out."

 

**130**  
When Tosh leaves for the day, he stops her and hugs her, lifting her easily from the ground.

"I’m glad that you’re ok."

A smile, a nod, and she hugs him back, warmth and life in his arms.

"Thank you."

He watches her leave before he turns around, looking up at Jack’s office. Jack is still in there, another drink in his hand, and Ianto breathes deeply before he walks up and enters.Jack doesn’t even look up, and for a moment Ianto doesn’t know if Jack even heard him or if that was his way of telling Ianto to leave. He almost does, but then he speaks up.

"I’m sorry."

"About what?"

"Getting weird about your 1941 boyfriend."

"He wasn’t my boyfriend."

"He was your…something."

"A lot of people are."

Words like punches, and Ianto turns and leaves, knowing that by tomorrow he’ll pretend they were never said.

_A lot of people are._

 

**95**  
The next day begins with everything he feared would happen once Owen was done with the Rift, and he can hardly look Jack into the face. He should have stopped Owen and he tried, but he hadn’t been good enough.

All he can do now is his job, trying to keep up with the messages and alerts and not losing his head.It’s easier than he thought. Jack needs him to stay calm.

He brings in Weevils without any help, his weapons only the spray and a glare; he updates Jack and it works as well as it possibly could.

Until...

 

**100**  
Lisa is there.

Lisa is there and she’s solid and real this time, and he’s scared and he wants to run away and he wants to wrap her in his arms.

"Open the rift," she tells him and he closes his eyes because he can’t do this, he can’t, Jack would never let this happen, but it’s Lisa asking him to do it.

Lisa, and she’s gone again, and the pain is all new.

 

**100**  
His team falls apart right in front of him while the world ends all around him, and he can only watch as Owen cuts himself to pieces with his rage. Jack asks for their trust and Lisa asks for the Rift and Owen is leaving and Jack will make Owen forget everything.

It’s too much but he keeps standing, and he wants his ghosts on his side because he needs someone to rely on.

 

**100**  
Gwen sees Rhys dying and brings him to the Hub, and when she talks about it all Ianto can see is Lisa’s body on the ground, her blood on his hands. Lisa is dead but she had been real a few hours ago. Lisa is dead.

And then Rhys is dead, too, and he watches Gwen and understands her and if Jack weren’t with Gwen, Ianto would hold her now. He wishes someone would have done that for him, and when she refuses his offer of help he stays silent.

When she tries to find a way to bring Rhys back, Ianto remembers all he did for Lisa. And when she attacks Jack, he remembers pointing a gun at Jack, and he’s breaking all over again as Gwen storms against Jack.

 

**100**  
"Make sure you stop him." 

Jack trusts him to do what he wants, but Lisa is dead and Lisa needs him and he can’t do what Jack wants anymore. Can’t, because this is about Lisa and Lisa is still everything. 

"No." This time it feels like betrayal.

 

**100**  
"Ianto, hiding a Cyber-girlfriend in the basement. Your three comrades here pumped bullets into her, remember?"

_Yes_ , he thinks and doesn’t say it. _So did you._

Chris stands beside Jack, looking at Ianto, and he knows she wants him to stop this. But she’s just a ghost, air and memory and his conscience, and Lisa had been real and he can’t follow his leaders now.

Jack is on the ground, and Ianto’s feet want to carry him to his leader. But he stays where he is, ignoring Chris, ignoring the new pain growing inside of him as he watches everything, as he watches Owen and a gun and Jack. He tries not to scream, tries not to break even more when the shots fall and Jack goes down again.

And then he is with his leader, kneeling beside Jack, and this is too familiar: he saw Chris like this. Dead and gone and it didn’t make sense with Chris and it doesn’t make sense with Jack, and Tosh was wrong. Jack can die after all, Ianto has watched him die, just like he told Jack he would, but all he feels is pain.

_Lisa_ , he thinks, _remember Lisa now, think of Jack later._

Lisa, Lisa, Lisa.

_Jack._

 

**70**  
Jack is alive, _Jack is alive_ , a heavy, living weight over his shoulder, and Ianto is scared because the Hub is collapsing around them. But Jack is alive, and Ianto grabs Jack’s coat on the way out.

Jack is alive and Ianto has done what Lisa told him to and things have to be alright now.

But they aren’t. There’s a monster and Jack leaves them all behind and dies again. Dies and Gwen stays with his body and Ianto hates her again because he can’t be with Jack then. Hates her and is grateful at the same time because he would sit with Jack and wait for him, too and it would kill him. Because Jack is not coming back this time, no matter what Gwen says. 

 

**89**  
He used to be the one always keeping his promises. Now it seems as if he always fails the people he loves.

 

**89**  
Jack is dead, and that’s everything – it’s his heartbeat now, every word a thud, his heart beating its way through his chest.

He’s dead, too, a ghost following his old routines; he knows this feeling, remembers it from Lisa. He never wanted to feel like this again. Never wanted it the first time, but life never cared about his wishes and Lisa is dead and Jack is dead, and he simply can’t do this anymore.

Can’t, and a coat is all it takes for his world to come crashing down again.

 

**50**  
Jack’s arms around him again, Jack’s mouth, and he wants it to last forever. Wants this moment, because all he can feel is Jack’s warmth, his hands, his lips, and he feels safe among the chaos. But even eternities end and the kiss lasts for seconds only. When they part it hurts and for seconds he knows that _something_ is coming. 

But then he sees Lisa in a corner of the room, a ghost once again now, nothing that Bilis had sent. She’s smiling at him and waving before she vanishes, and Owen is crying in Jack’s arms, and all he can feel is that 

Jack is there.

Jack is there and he’s alive, and maybe things will work out this time.

 

**56**  
"Something's taken him, Jack's gone."

 

**40**  
The day after he lost everything again (and again) is a Saturday, and it’s sunny and warm. He welcomes the darkness and destruction of the Hub and clears away what he can, shoving and pulling at debris, saving files and computers.

It’s hard work and it helps him to keep away the memories, to not think of Jack. When Owen arrives, he isn’t surprised.

"Don’t you have a home to go to?"

"Don’t you?"

"No, not really."

Owen smirks at that, coming closer with careful steps.

"You shot me."

"You killed Jack."

"True."

Silence then, Ianto returning to his work and Owen watching him, leaning against the remains of a table.

"What now?"

There’s fear in Owen’s voice, fear and worry and so much more, and it’s the only thing that keeps Ianto from shooting Owen again. Right now, he hates everybody because hate is easier than grief, but Owen sounds like Ianto feels and it calms the itch in his fingers.

"Damage control."

"Ok."

And so they get to work.

 

**31**  
Jack is gone and Ianto waits for him to return. He knows waiting by now, has spend months like this, but this time it’s different. It’s not the dull pain of waiting for the dead, waiting for a resurrection or time to realize the big mistake and to just rewind. It’s not like waiting for Lisa to get better, the panic and fear and hope. It’s waiting for something he knows will happen, because he believes in Jack now, and he’s only spending the time in-between.

 

**29**  
"Come on, Owen, you look like you need to get drunk."

"Are you trying to pick me up, Ianto?"

"Only in your wet dreams."

 

**30**  
Days go by and turn into weeks. He’s spending his time with Tosh, talking and smiling and laughing, and it’s strange and it’s good and sometimes he’s a bit clumsy. He hasn’t had a friend for a while and sometimes he doesn’t know what to do with her. But that’s okay, because she didn’t have a real friend for far too long either, and when he tells her he loves her, she gets it. She tells him she loves him, too.

When he finally gives in and gives up for one night because _Jack is gone_ and he can’t take it anymore, and he knows he's lying to himself when he thinks that waiting is okay, she holds him close and tells him "No, it’s _okay_. Jack will come back."

_Jack will come back._

 

**23**  
They’re back to doing their thing, hunting aliens and sometimes humans, forming a new puzzle, a new team, and it almost makes sense.

"Fucking Weevils." Owen’s voice to his left, both of them on the ground, the Weevil lying a bit away.

Tosh looks down at them, gun in her hand, raising an eyebrow. "Owen? Ewww."

 

**25**  
He spends his time holding Gwen’s hand because she waits, too. She just doesn’t know how, and so he talks her through the grief and guilt and desperation. He tells her that it will get better, and she watches him with Tosh and believes him.

He never tells her that the waiting gets harder and harder for him, too.

 

**20**  
"You miss him, don’t you?"

Tosh’s head is heavy on his shoulder, her words slurred by alcohol and exhaustion.

"Yes."

"I miss him, too"

 

**18**  
He watches Owen, giving him something to do, giving him freedom, space and time and reigning him in when he has to. He doesn’t speak of Diane or of shooting him or of Jack when he’s with Owen. It gets easier and Ianto stops hating him.

 

**19**  
He never tells Gwen that it’s unfair that she got Rhys back but Lisa is still dead and Jack is still gone. He has to take care of her, too, after all.

 

**17**  
"I think I’m drunk."

"No, really?"

"Why are you still sober?"

"Someone has to get you home, Owen."

"Oh...Thanks."

 

**14,5**  
He finds them their cases, he takes care of the money and the files, and he takes care of them. And still, he’s behind the scenes, like he has always been before, and he stays silent as they argue over every case and every little decisions. The big decisions are already made, but they don’t need to know about that.

They are his team and he would die for every single one of them. They need him, and that’s reason enough to give his life.

 

**14**  
He’s standing on the roof with Gwen at his side, watching the sun rise over Cardiff. She used to be here with Jack sometimes and he used to hate her a little for that. But now it’s them, watching the light change over their city, and it’s easier to be with Gwen now that Jack is gone.

"You have to lead them now. Owen is too edgy and he wouldn’t follow Tosh. It has to be you when you’re out there."

She nods, still watching the horizon, and he knows that she’s scared.

"Don’t worry, I take care of the rest."

When Gwen takes his hand, he doesn’t pull away. 

 

**15**  
"I just wish he would be back already, Tosh."

"I know, Ianto."

"It...hurts."

 

**10**  
He misses his first team and he misses Lisa, and sometimes it hurts too much again. He tells Tosh when it’s his turn to be drunk, and she listens and nods. Then Tosh and he burn some pictures to say goodbye to them all, and he watches their smiles go up in flames. He keeps other pictures; he puts a picture of Lisa and one of his team up at his work station. Letting go isn’t the same as forgetting, and when he looks up he sees them smile at him.

_Breathe_ , Chris says, and he does. It’s the only thing left to do.

 

**13**  
He waits for Jack, because Jack is his leader and because Ianto will fall in love with him completely then. He knows it, feels it, the same way he knows that Jack won’t replace Lisa and that Jack won’t love him the way Ianto will. And it will be alright sometimes and it will be painful and terrible at others. Most of the time it will be something in-between. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to deal with that.

 

**5**  
"What will you do when Jack comes back?"

"I don’t know anymore."

"You still want him to come back, don’t you?"

" _I don’t know anymore_. He’ll break my heart."

 

**1**  
He lives his life. That he does for himself. Most of the time. After all, it never was supposed to be easy.


End file.
